


Exhaustion Drop

by entanglednow



Category: Dead Space
Genre: Gen, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-03
Updated: 2012-07-03
Packaged: 2017-11-09 05:18:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/451769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The very first thing Isaac does when he gets a room is jam the table in front of the vent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exhaustion Drop

The very first thing Isaac does when he gets a room is jam the table in front of the vent.

It doesn't make him feel any better, and he can't help but be a little angry about that. The air recycling is slow and quiet, but the flow of air is slightly too warm. Or maybe it's him, the suit's not really made for habitation areas. The lights are a steady, calm blue, the floors and walls are clean, there are no other sounds.

Isaac waits for his body to relax, for it to accept - but it won't, and after a minute he stops trying, he stops expecting it to. There's a stabbing ache behind his eye, he wants to rub it, to press sharply at the itch of it, but he can't bring himself to touch it.

The suit comes off in pieces, and he shakes a little at every buckle unsnapped but keeps going anyway. He can't keep it on forever, he can't live in it, no matter how much his brain tells him he isn't safe. His hands aren't as efficient as the clasps and hooks that usually replace and upgrade it, but they get the job done. His nails are dirty, fingertips grimy, they've been jammed tight into the ends of the gloves for so long, stained so deep he's not sure it'll ever come out. No blood stains though, no blood stains under the suit. He keeps going, peels it all off, material underneath damp with sweat. There are bruises under all the padding, scattered across his ribs and back. Up the length of his arms. A twist of ugly colours, shades of green and blue and purple, bruises over bruises. They feel like they go all the way through him. There's no blood though, there's old blood dried in every crease of the suit, metal rusty and dark, padded cloth red-brown. But there's no blood underneath it, no wounds, no puncture marks, nothing through the skin. He checks to make sure, and then checks again.

He shakes through the shower, a subtle tremor which won't stop, no matter how many times he clenches his fists. He scrubs under the spray, the stained ends of his fingers, the tired, dirty length of his body. Then he scrubs the bruises until they ache. His eye still hurts, the back of it feels blistered and tight, but he doesn't want to look in the mirror. He doesn't want to look at himself at all. He's afraid to.

Isaac doesn't feel clean, but he feels hollow, he feels empty. He feels human, which is good enough.

There are clothes when he gets back to the room, balanced on the chair where he didn't see them before. A stack of pants and t-shirts in pale blue and calm grey. They sit there, material soft and new.

He puts the suit back on instead.

Just in case.

Give it time, he thinks. He can't expect it to be easy, after everything he's been through, everything he's _seen_. He tells himself sternly that he'll be ok, that he can't be normal just yet. He needs some time, he can do this, he can hold it together. He just needs some time to come down. He needs some time to not be normal, just a little, just enough.

Ellie comes before he convinces himself he remembers how to be ok. It feels like a lifetime ago, he can't remember himself before, isn't sure he'd know himself if he met him. Ellie stands in the doorway frowning at him, eye still patched over and he resists the urge to rub his own again. To wish - briefly, feverishly - that someone had carved his free as well. She looks at the suit, then at the chair, but she doesn't say anything.

"Isaac." Her voice is soft but firm, and the way she says his name, as if she was just checking, just needed to know if he was here. It's enough. He steps aside and she comes in, takes up more of the room than she should, she smells clean too, clothes brighter and warmer than the ones she'd been wearing last time he saw her. "I'd almost forgotten what it was like to be in a crowd of people," she says. "It was a relief until I realised I wanted to get away and then I was angry at myself."

Her hand lifts, aborts half way through the movement, and Isaac thinks she was going to press against the white over her eye. Helpless not to touch and scratch at the loss of it. He feels guilty for that, for everything. He's not sure where his guilt starts and where it ends, gnawing like hunger in his chest.

"You look...better," she says carefully. It might not be an outright lie, but it's definitely a shaky truth. Only then she smiles at him, and Isaac thinks he is, just a little bit. He eases back into a chair and lets her talk.

He's been listening to her quietly for no more than a few minutes when he realises he doesn't remember her knocking.

It creeps up his spine, something between fear, misery and hysteria, a shifting nauseous wave of it. He won't give in to it though. He won't let that happen to him again. The marker is destroyed and this place is clean.

She's pacing, not moving to sit in either of the chairs, not coming close enough to touch.

" - enough paranoia to last a lifetime."

_He doesn't remember her knocking._

Isaac can't help himself any longer, it's a frenzied itch beneath the skin. He doesn't trust - he's forgotten how to trust the world, and it would be easy to pretend - but he pretended before. He thought he was fine before, and he'd woke up in a straitjacket with the whole universe going mad. He'd woken in the same nightmare, or a different nightmare. An oil spill of horror that never went away just expanded and flowed around him, covering everything it touched.

He lifts a hand, stretches, fingertips finding the warmth of Ellie's arm, the reality of her skin.

She stops talking, blinks and frowns, unsure - and then abruptly not, and something in her face goes soft. She comes closer, sinks to her knees in front of him.

"I'm real, Isaac," she says quietly, knowing in a way that makes the back of his throat tight. In a way that makes him feel bruised and fragile and broken clean through. She lifts his hand from where his fingertips had dug into her arm and lays it against her face. He can feel the tickling strands of her hair, the jumping flutter of her pulse beneath the skin. She's warm like a living thing. "I'm real."

 


End file.
